On Sun, 2001-12-09 at 10:13, Chuck Esterbrook wrote: > In general, I'm not seeing that tools are designed around the > assumption that text files stop at 80 columns. > > In all three products, sizing the window to be wide enough for 130 > characters actually felt excessive to me, but 110-120 felt fine. I have > 19" monitor with 1152x864. > > The thing of it is, using editors that allow me to not wrap, I don't > really care how long some code lines go on. Should we even dictate that > code lines _must_ be wrapped at a column width? Is this another > emacs-only issue? > > Feel free to speak up. But if we decide "yes", it will be something > bigger and more modern than 80.
I don't think lines shouldn't be *allowed* to go over 80 columns -- it happens sometimes, and sometimes it isn't easier to read the code just because you've arbitrarily put in some newlines. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and all that. However, I think 80 columns is conventional, and generally appropriate. I don't *want* to make my editor wider than 80 columns, because that is a waste of space. I have better things to do with the rest of my screen than sport a bit chunk of whitespace for that minority of lines that go long. Choosing something other than 80 columns seems arbitrary. 80 is the convention for most code and email. As a result, I will *not* set up my environment for Webware code to the detriment of all the other code I work with. I will not make my font small, or my windows wide. I will not change whatever setting it is in Emacs that controls how wide the wrapping command works at. And why should I? And not just me, but everyone else? There's *nothing wrong* with standard Python conventions! Why can't we just use those? I am going to keep writing my code pretty much to Python coding standards, because I think that is the Right Thing -- not necessarily because those standards are the best, most logical, or most aesthetic standards. I'm going to do that because that makes my code most accessible to the general Python community, and means my code will fit in with most code from other sources. I'm going to set up my editor and general environment to do that. This shouldn't be a controversial choice. A lot of other people have chosen that too... and when they do, Webware code looks ugly to them. Instead of asking us to change our environments, shouldn't Webware just go along to get along? It seems like hubris to do otherwise. Ian _______________________________________________ Webware-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/webware-devel
